where orders emerge

Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 49 of Gottfried Dietze’s insightful 1973 tract, Two Concepts of the Rule of Law; by “Law State” Dietze here means a government meant to be kept limited by constitutional rules, as opposed to a state that is overtly an instrument for carrying out whatever might be the wishes and whims of the sovereign (be the sovereign a Mao-like monster or a collection of people who outvote other people by 50.000001% to 49.999999%):

Since the democratic ruler is insatiable, that ruler will assume more and more power. In the end, the formal Law State will be mere window-dressing for a democratic power- and police-state, characterized by such a mass of statutes, rules, and regulations that not much will be left of the libertarian substance of genuine constitutionalism.